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Walt Rubel: Militarization of police gives a whole new meaning to war on drugs

Las Cruces Sun-News

Posted:
07/12/2014 05:08:42 PM MDT

The Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle (MRAP), valued at $658,000, is designed to allow U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to survive ambushes and attacks by land mines or improvised explosive devices. None of which would seem necessary when patrolling the highways of the Land of Enchantment. But that didn't stop the State Police from snatching one up.

Closer to home, the Doña Ana County Sheriff's Office is now the proud owner of a MARCbot, a mini all-terrain vehicle used by troops on the battlefield to do remote searches for explosives. State Police based in Las Cruces recently took possession of two Humvees, one armored.

They are just some of the millions of pieces of military equipment transferred from the battlefield to cities and towns throughout the country through the military's Defense Logistics Agency. Some $4.3 billion worth of supplies have been shipped to 8,000 law enforcement agencies, at virtually no cost to those agencies, according to a Sun-News story last week by James Staley.

Some of the equipment has an obvious general use — handguns, rifles, magazines, tents, sleeping bags, fitness equipment and televisions. The county recently received a pallet of hand sanitizer from Iraq. But other equipment seems better suited for the battlefield than our local neighborhoods.

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In a report last month titled "War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing," the American Civil Liberties Union looked at 800 SWAT deployments conducted by 20 law enforcement agencies in 2011 and 2012. The five key findings from that study were:

1. Responding agencies received 15,054 items of battle uniforms or personal protective equipment during the relevant time period. An estimated 500 MRAP vehicles have been transferred to law enforcement.

2. Police departments have scant record keeping on the impact of militarization.

3. The majority (79 percent) of SWAT deployments studied were for the purpose of executing a search warrant, most commonly in drug investigations. Only 7 percent were for hostage, barricade, or active-shooter scenarios.

4. The use of paramilitary weapons and tactics primarily affected people of color. Overall, 42 percent of people targeted by a SWAT deployment to execute a search warrant were black and 12 percent were Latino.

5. In some instances, the use of violent tactics and equipment caused property damage, injury, and/or death.

"Neighborhoods are not war zones, and our police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies," the report argues.

We all want our officers to be as safe as possible when patrolling our community. And, a device like the MARCbot does have obvious law enforcement applications. Better to send a robot than a person to get information on a suspect barricaded in a home or to check for possible explosives.

But it seems to me that the Army needs armored Humvees more than the New Mexico State Police does, especially considering the number of lives lost at the start of the Iraq War because we didn't have enough of them. Soldiers with rudimentary welding skills were improvising with anything they could find to protect their vehicles. Now, the Army is giving away armored Humvees like second-hand clothing (would this be a good time to talk about all those "crippling cuts" to the defense budget we keep hearing about?)

I wish that instead of guns and armored vehicles, the Army had a surplus of lapel recorders and dashboard cameras.

Walter Rubel is editorial page editor of the Sun-News. He can be reached at wrubel@lcsun-news.com or follow @WalterRubel on Twitter.

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